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Preview: Kenya, Canada hope to hit winning ways in minnows clash

By Suneer Chowdhary

 

The two teams, Canada and Kenya, have played six games in this tournament between them and the common highlight in five of them has been the result margin.

Preview: Kenya, Canada hope to hit winning ways in minnows clash

Kenya would be looking to redeem themselves after a poor World Cup campaign so far


By Suneer Chowdhary

 

Delhi: Mar 7, 2011


The two teams, Canada and Kenya, have played six games in this tournament between them and the common highlight in five of them has been the result margin. Kenya went down by ten wickets, 205 runs and nine wickets in the three games, while the losses to Canada have been by 210 and 175 runs before a much closer game against Pakistan saw them go down by 46 runs.

 

Taking it a step forward, what has been common feature across all the six games has to be the batting performances. Kenya have had the lowest score to their name with only 69 scored while the best effort with the bat has been their 142 all out in the Sri Lanka match. The remaining four scores have been between 69 and 142, speaking volumes about the lack of skills exhibited by the batsmen.

 

Lesser said the better about the bowling. Barring that one game between Canada and Pakistan where the latter capitulated to a sub-200 score, the rest of the batmen have found the task of batting against Canada and Kenya less than arduous.

 

Clearly then, this game has the makings of turning into a close encounter, but one with fairly low quality.

 

Given their experience, Kenya would have gone into the game as favourites. Having been one-time semi-finalists, Kenya would have expected things to be lot smoother in the ensuing years. The results have gone in the opposite direction though and there remains hardly anything to choose from between the two teams.

 

The two teams have played 11 completed games and Kenya lead the head-to-head 7-4. Again, in the last three matches played between the two, Canada have won all three; a clear sign of how the tide seems to have turned.

 

Where Canada may struggle is with their bowling. If it was Henry Osinde who injured himself in the first game of the tournament, Khurram Chohan had to walk out in the previous one after sending down only 21 deliveries. Other than that, John Davison had missed the last game against Pakistan but with the kind of form that he has exhibited, he hasn’t been missed yet.

 

One mustn’t forget that the game will be a day-night match at the Feroz Shah Kotla, where the batting was hardly easy as one saw in the South Africa-West Indies game. Spinners will hold the key for both sides which is why one senses that L Balaji Rao could hold the key in the game.

 

After two successive poor performances with the bat, Kenya had had a decent build-up through the Obuya brothers against Sri Lanka before Laisth Malinga ran through the lower-order. Canada do not possess that kind of fire-power and Kenya will probably look to use the same strategy here. And then hope that they can explode towards the end of the innings. The question is whether they have the batsmen to do the latter.

 

Teams

Canada (Probable): Kumar, Gunasekera, Sarkari, Bagai, Hansra, Cheema, Gordon, Baidwan, Chohan, Rao, Osinde.

 

Kenya (Probable): Ouma, Water, Collins Obuya, David Obuya, Tikolo, Mishra, Kamande, Odhiambo, Ongondo, Ngoche, Otieno.

 

Umpires: Asad Rauf (Pakistan) and Billy Doctrove (West Indies).

 

Time: 14.30 hours local (09.00 GMT)

 

(Suneer is a Mumbai-based cricket writer and can be contacted at suneerchowdhary@gmail.com and Tweets here: @suneerchowdhary)

 

 

Pictures © Getty Images

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